search

I replaced a hard drive in June, and since then I’ve had problems getting Windows search to return results for settings shortcuts. There were either no results at all, which I finally resolved, or unusably slow (20+ seconds to show a result). Here’s how I finally solved it.

Enable deep searching inside files in all folders, even if the search system hasn’t indexed the location. Searches in these places might take longer because they haven’t been scanned ahead of time, but this will provide consistent search experience everywhere.

Need to find some code, script, or other text in non-standard files? Let Windows Search index and provide instant results for CSS, JavaScript or other file types by setting up content indexing for more file types in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8.

Many of even the most infrequent of Internet users has experienced instant searches by now, where search suggestions (or even full results) appear live while you type, before you even press Enter. It seems like magic, searching the entire world as fast as you can type. But did you know your Windows PC has the same power?